Parent Entrepreneur Power Podcast Interview

I was recently contacted by Mary Kathryn Johnson, founder of the Parent Entrepreneur Power podcast, about doing an interview. Mary was able to land Pat Flynn as a guest on her episode #2, which caught my attention (since he’s, you know, basically my online biz idol and all!). She focuses on (no surprise) parent entrepreneurs, and her questions reflect that viewpoint.

My “Dilemma”

I have an enviable problem right now…I love working on Pro Blog School and have so much to share with you, but there is a constant tug of war for my time between Pro Blog School and 100 Days of Real Food. Luckily they support one another since I share many of the discoveries I make working on 100DRF with you here. But with so much traffic on my wife’s site, relatively small changes can translate into say a $5k increase in annual income, year after year. And larger initiatives can yield more like $10-15k. So I can’t ignore that stuff.

Personally I love listening to podcasts since they can turn a long road trip into productive time, and I also like how they provide a window into the personality of both the interviewer and interviewee. But let me also comment on podcast participation from my perspective as a guest.

Why I’m Loving Interviews

As I push through some high priority projects, I’m finding that interviews are a great way to convey a lot of information to all of you (and the interviewer’s audience too, of course) in a short amount of time. So long story short, I said “yes” to Mary! … and “yes” to three more podcast interviews that you can be on the lookout for soon.

But I’d like to get your feedback. Do you find value in these conversations? Let me know in the comments. All right, you can access the podcast (and subscribe via iTunes) by following a link on this page, or simply press the play button below to listen right here and now.

P.S. Here are some things I’ve learned/changed as a result of this interview

I talk with my hands (hence the occasional banging noise on this recording) and have since purchased a decent mic setup 🙂

“Umm” is actually not my favorite word…I am better in the next interview I will share soon!

I need to shorten my answers for sure. Bear with me, I will improve.

Show Notes

1:35 Tell us about yourself.

3:43 …what security is there in any corporate job or any job helping someone else build their dreams? Right?

4:44 Isn’t it amazing how once you realize the potential that you have with any kind of business that you take on yourself you then look at that and go “well if I can do this, then what else can I do and where else can I go?” But it’s that first step that is so hard for us…

8:00 …you use in your real life. I trust your ideas. I trust your suggestions. Much more than just some website I might stumble upon that’s trying to sell me something but not really giving me anything of substance behind it.

10:05 …and you talked about a course from the other people in the mastermind group that also have food blogs and you can do the same thing and offer the different levels of expertise to your audience based on where they are, through your posts, through your coaching, through all sorts of things.

11:36 …Pat Flynn. Definitely a mentor to most of us who are online…you can make a business out of it…fight you for it by then subscribing to it…

13:04 Tell me more about the structure of your business and family. Now you have 2 girls. Right? So how do you, if this is your day job and obviously it’s Lisa’s day job too, how

16:49 What skills do you think you use the most and to the most, to the greatest effect? As both a parent and an entrepreneur.

18:19 Why is every day a great day for you as an entrepreneur?

20:04 …letting others in your life that maybe bring you down…Have you ever had to deal with anything like that or has it been pretty much smooth sailing for you?

22:17 …new model of work…opportunities on the internet…can’t wait to see what her sons do…with the internet, so many possibilities

23:29 …how you guys balance your time…How do you compartmentalize both your time and your money? How does money play into that? Convince family/yourself this can be done. How do you compartmentalize/balance it?

27:42 Bullet point view…take us from day 1…then realizing you could make a living…give us timeline of how long that took.

30:25 So within a span of, well 1-1.5 or 2 yrs, was when you started seeing this incredible opportunity and looking for information and you had to start looking into monetizing…

33:25 How many hours a week would you say she spent building this blog?

36:28 What’s the next dream? And how has Pro Blog School fed into this whole image?

38:50 You have to have another income stream b/c it won’t be novelty…

40:00 Biggest difficulty is choosing only one at a time…

42:05 What tools do you use? What are your most important power tools?

45:36 That’s the reason we’re doing this, right?

46:17 What piece of advice…If you could give one piece of advice to someone sitting at home…contemplating this whole journey?

Comments

It was such a pleasure connecting with you, and getting such personal and actionable tidbits from 100DRF and ProBlogSchool! I have already received feedback from several audience members sharing that you gave them a deeper understanding of the “balance” choices they need to make in order to create the freedom-based business they crave.

Hi Jason, Great interview. I opened my blog this past February and I didn’t know about Pat Flynn, so thanks for sharing such great resource. I really admire you and your wife for all that you guys have accomplished. Thanks for all the good info.

Hey Zamara – Thanks for saying that. I certainly feel I need to work on my interviewing skills to be more effective in conveying actionable info, but I’m glad to have put myself out there to start getting feedback. Good luck with the new blog. – Jason

Nice to get such a conversational and candid look into your business. Everything you are doing on this site is insanely applicable and useful to me, as I recently left my corporate job to work full-time on the business that my wife and I have been building for the past three years, MamaNatural.com. So please keep up the good work! And I look forward to hearing your SPI interview.

If you ever need a sounding board for video stuff, just holler. We’ve done hundreds of YouTube videos, with over 20 million views. Video is the passion and focus of our mission to help moms and families live more natural and healthy lives. And I do think that video could be a fine differentiator for you to do something like Ask Pat. But I recommend doing it on YouTube, as you’ll get a whole new audience discovering it over there.

Hey Michael – Yeah I remember seeing some of your videos now! Good stuff. I like the humor. Congrats to you and your wife! I’ll hit you up should we need some video tips down the road, so thanks. – Jason

Doing podcast interviews is well worth it. I found you through your interview with Pat Flynn and I’ve been reading a bunch of your posts here and a few on 100 days of real food. So if you’re concerned about podcasts taking away from time working on the blogs, don’t be. I am traffic acquired through a podcast!

Thanks for stopping by, Daniel. I do like how much ground you can cover in an hour on a podcast! Plus it allows the listener to get a feel for your personality more so than through written text, I believe. – Jason

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